


By a departing light

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Marriage, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: There had been several moments when he thought she would speak.





	

How young she looked, sleeping on the sofa with a hand pillowing her sweet face and her feet tucked up under her skirts! He could believe she was only sixteen instead of the thirty years that showed in her intelligent gaze, the deftness of her hands, how her tone altered when she spoke to Julia, gentle to Keturah, coaxing with Miriam, how she spoke to him in the night when he woke fearful or longing. Though she had more time for it now than at Mansion House, she arranged her hair more simply these days, sometimes only holding it back with some tortoiseshell combs and a silk snood when her head ached and the softness of the chestnut waves against her cheek suggested the girl she had been, whom he had never known except for these glimpses. It was the fourth time this week that she had fallen to sleep shortly after they retired to the parlor and he decided tonight to bring her up early so she might rest more comfortably in their bed.

She barely stirred when he picked up her; she did not wake enough to tell him to put her down, that she could walk, that he should not tire himself or strain his back. She only nestled into his arms and reached a hand around his neck, her fingers relaxed against his skin, breaching his collar. She was still too light, he thought, the weight she’d lost from the typhoid slow to return though he knew Julia, who was fond of Mary in a way beyond the respectful gratitude she had to him, offered buttered biscuits, cakes, anything she thought might tempt Mary at tea-time or whenever Mary sat down to read or write letters. He could feel the slender bones of her arms beneath the overlaid muscle, the jeweled diadem of her spine against his body. Carrying her up the stairs did not tax him. What was difficult was to put her down on the bed and lose the warmth of her against him, the delicate scent of her flesh and the lavender sachet that lingered in her chemise and petticoats.

She woke a little as he undressed her, unbuttoning her bodice and slipping it from her shoulders, raising her hips to help him remove the overskirt and layers beneath. She sighed as he unlaced her stays and pulled off the net from her hair, the combs laid in the gilt-edged dish she kept for them. He paused over the chemise, wondering if it was worth disturbing her more to replace it with her nightdress; his hand grazed the side of her full breast and she gasped but not in pleasure he was used to hearing and he wondered even more. She opened her eyes and they were dark and drowsy but completely aware of him. She did not smile but her expression was more than a smile, a message he had waited for. He moved without thinking, for all the thinking he had done about it over the past few weeks, and laid his hand against her belly, low where it was softly curved between her hips. Then he parted his lips to speak when he heard her voice, felt her hand laid on top of his, pressing him to her, finally acknowledging the secret hope they had not shared aloud,

“August.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a sweet little Phoster vignette that manages to settle Julia, her baby Miriam, and my invented OFC Keturah happily at the Foster's house. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
